Dragon Masters

You are not the target audience.

It’s Wednesday, which means it’s Snarf day. If you’re enjoying these, please forward to a friend or group that might too. If you’re new here, check out the archives at this link, and subscribe right here:

Before we get going, quick question for the room: Do you want a review of the new Pixar movie, Turning Red? I wasn’t planning on breaking from books for now, but it seems to be the hot thing these days among certain relevant ages here.

If I get enough affirmatives on that, I’ll do it for next week. Just reply to this email or use the comment section on this post.

Now to this week’s series, remember how commercials for sugary cereals used to have that shot at the end with the cereal bowl as one item on a table with fruit, a glass of milk, toast, etc. as if anytime you are eating this cereal, it will be with a buffet of other items, and really you should be considering the cereal’s nutritional value in that context? Because who ever eats Lucky Charms without also having a grapefruit and a bowl of oatmeal?

This series is kind of like the bowl of cereal. Not a complete reading diet, but it could be what gets your kid to the table.

The Series: Dragon Masters

The Author: Stacey West

The Illustrator: Graham Howells

Length/Picture Density: 70-80 pages, pictures on every spread

The Premise: An eight-year-old boy, Drake, gets plucked by royal decree from his peasant life in England-by-another-name to become a dragon master at the castle. He is simply chosen via magical destiny stuff by the castle wizard, Griffith, who looks into his crystal ball to identify the next dragon master whenever the need for one comes up.

Which is about once a book once things get rolling. We start the series with a starter pack of three other eight-year-olds and their dragons, and after that we’re introducing a new one each book.

The Basic Formula: There’s some kind of issue that is caused or solved by the particular book’s titular dragon. Drake and his friends go and deal with it. It’s fairly episodic, but there are some multi-book plot lines involving dark wizards and the trouble they cause.

The Review: What do you want from your chapter book experience? Are you seeking emotional depth? Strong characters? Stories that provoke meaningful thoughts and discussions? Or are you happy enough if your kid is entertained, immersed even, by a story?

If the latter is true for you, then read on, because the Dragon Masters series is excellent at entertaining young kids. The series is not edgy, challenging, or especially thought provoking, but for many kids it’s gripping.

The problems in the stories are solved too easily, the illustrations are vivid in a way I found glaring (and the characters always seem to be smiling unless there is a very good reason not to), and the explanations of how dragon magic works are too pat, but all of that serves to make the books very accessible and enjoyable for kids. What makes them bad is also what makes them good.

The cast of characters is diverse, but the character construction gets a little lazy. We’ve got a white male protagonist who is humble and finding his way, but rises to the moment when he really needs to. There’s a peaceful Asian kid, a fiery redhead, a wizard who looks just like Gandalf.

Then there is the world tour. Home base for these books is England, but it’s called Bracken. The books take us to Egypt, Spain, Ireland, the Caribbean, one of the small Pacific islands, and many other places, but they all go by different names too. It doesn’t exactly feel like appropriation, because the books don’t really draw from other cultures so much as describe them and swap out the names, but part of me wishes they would just own that and use their real names.

The books occasionally dip their toes in the waters of anti-authoritarianism without ever drifting into anything I would call subversive. A couple of characters challenge the whole dragon-dragon master paradigm on dragons’ rights grounds. The king is sometimes treated as an irrational leader who needs to be subtly managed by Griffith and others. Drake even has a moment of well-intentioned disobedience something like 17 books in.

None of it is exactly “rethink society” type stuff, but my guess is that if the author writes for an older age group, there will be a heavier “question authority” strain in those. As it is, the books don’t have enough room to do anything with most of the established characters they introduce in a given story, so when do you expect them to get to a nuanced exploration of rules in society and culture.

And actually, lack of time and space is my main objection to these books, and again, what makes them as good as they are at what they do. Drake develops friendships with the other dragon masters, but we rarely see them interact. His mom is out there somewhere farming the fields of Bracken, but don’t worry about her — she understands her young son is up to important work, so don’t worry about her. And how about his friends? Do they have some kind of backstory or something?

With a new dragon to introduce and a plot to speed through, we don’t have time for any of that character stuff.

That issue gets compounded by the fact that in the plot arc of some of the most recent books, we’re essentially creating redundant dragons. For this task, we need a lava dragon. Don’t we already have a fire dragon who has had very little to do for the last ten books? Yeah, but the lava dragon makes an even hotter flame. Fire dragon won’t cut it for this one. Oh okay. After that we need a wave dragon. Should we just try the water dragon, who again has been sidelined for a long time and whose dragon master is the main character’s best friend but we almost never see them interact? Nope, it’s gotta be a wave dragon.

This is drifting from review to venting session, but I have to talk about how Griffith only ever sends three dragon masters to handle whatever is happening for that book. Hmm, incredibly powerful dark wizard attempting to conquer the land. Let’s send three eight-year-olds and their dragons to handle that and have the other six hang back in case something else happens. Don’t hire this guy as any kind of strategist.

The Dragon Masters series is part of the Branches Books line, and if you pick up another Branches series you’ll notice certain similarities.

I’ll let the Branches folks themselves explain their deal:

“This series is part of Scholastic's early chapter book line called Branches, which is aimed at newly independent readers. With easy-to-read text, high-interest content, fast-paced plots, and illustrations on every page, these books will boost reading confidence and stamina.”

I’ve been avoiding the other Branches series, because, well you just read the review, but Leo loves this series and I’d be thrilled if one day he dove back in as an independent reader. Especially because that would mean I wouldn’t be the one doing the reading.